John A. Lind |
|
Hi,
Having handled all three and owned one of them for 20 years, I will give you a "review" of them.First though:
"Obsolete" is purely in the mind of the user and the advertising of the manufacturers. If a camera, lens or other photographic tool is providing what is needed for the desired tasks, then it's not obsolete! Olympus OM-10:
This was a consumer grade camera body with OM mount that went into production circa 1979. Olympus' had just updated it s pro grade OM-1 to an OM-1n, and the OM-2 was similarly upgraded to an OM-2n very shortly thereafter. Inexpensive, it is a good shooter and easy to use in aperture priority auto-exposure mode. Setting an exposure manually is a bit cumbersome and requries a "manual adapter." If you have one for it, fine, but buying one now if you don't is expensive. They're getting rarer and the price is going up. OM lenses are not that difficult to find, and the build quality on them is excellent. For any given focal length the faster ones were intended for the pro and high-end market, although the bulk of the slower ones are also excellent. Canon AE-1:
A slightly later version of this is the AE-1P which also has a "program mode." It was Canon's consumer grade body with the A-1 and F-1 being their pro grade bodies, with Canon's FD lens mount. It has shutter priority auto-exposure and manual exposure. In build materials and durability I rank it between the Olympus consumer OM-10 and the pro grade OM-2n. Even so, it's still a very reliable "workhorse." Manual expousure is not as cumbersome compared to the OM-10 with its manual adapter though. If you're accustomed to aperture priority auto-exposure, using shutter speed priority will seem a little odd and require adjusting your thinking while setting exposure. This is the only one of the three that can control a dedicated flash, such as several models of Canon made flash units, using the camera body's internal metering (called TTL-auto control). The other two can only trigger the flash (any auto control must be done by the flash itself using its own internal sensor). Nikon F2:
Definitely a high end pro grade body. It's much heavier and slightly larger than the other two, but it's also built like a tank. It's a very reliable, durable workhorse that can withstand some abuse, it's also different from the other two in fundamental design. The F2 has a completely mechanical shutter (the others are electronic) and is manual exposure mode only. The one significant drawback is in most of the metered "photomic" prism viewfinders that were made for them. The ring resistor in them wears out and cannot be replaced or rebuilt. I hesitate to cite it as a reliability problem as these prism finders worked for many, many years. The resistors simply wear out with use and age. There are two specific prism finders that do not have this problem, but the are much more expensive on the used market (for this very reason). They use Nikon's F mount AI and AIS lenses, plus Nikon's current auto-focus lenses are backward compatible (although you lose AF capability). It also does not have a built-in hot shoe, requires an adapter to mount a flash on the camera. If I didn't already have an extensive camera system and someone gave me a choice among the three, I'd be vascillating between the AE-1 and F2; the AE-1 for its AE mode and TTL-auto flash control, and the F2 for its rugged durability. -- John
October 14, 2002
|
